Good Government

Keeping tabs on municipal business and city laws just got a lot easier in the Big Apple.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed two bills that improve government transparency. The first, Introductory 363-A, requires online posting of the City Record – NYC’s daily list of procurement notices, bid solicitations and awards – within 24 hours of the print edition publishing. The second, Introductory 149-A, mandates that New York City laws and its Charter be published on the Web. Any changes to the rules must be updated online within 30 days.

Int. 149 has a number of benefits for both residents and city staff. While the city’s laws are currently online, they are hard to locate and are only updated twice a year, according to Int. 149 co-sponsor Council Member Ben Kallos.

But beyond the legislation to make future editions of the City Records, which goes into effect in one year, the city has also reached out to a group of civic technology and advocacy organizations to undertake an effort over the next year to make around 4,000 previous editions of the City Record from 1998 to the present, currently in PDF format, accessible in a comparable way.

Coordinating that effort are Noel Hidalgo and Chris Whong, executive director and co-captain, respectively, of New York City's Code for America brigade BetaNYC, which has pushed for the legislation along with sponsor City Council member Ben Kallos, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, City Council member James Vacca and City Council member Brad Lander.

New York City recently took exciting steps to free our laws and public information. Two bills, Open Law (prime sponsored by Council Member Brad Lander) and City Record Online, which I sponsored, were recently signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio into law. Now, the City’s law, the best versions of which have been inaccessible on for-fee sites, and New York’s City Record, a complete version of which has only been in print and distributed to a set group, will be open to the public and easily accessible.

“Open Law” requires the city to post a continuously updated version of the charter, administrative code and rules of the city of New York, while “City Record Online” will put the paper City Record on a public website. New York City plans to go even further than the law requires, and will unlock past City Records in a machine-readable format. To do this, New York City will leverage public-private partnership with civic technologists BetaNYC, Civic Technologists, Dev Bootcamp, Ontodia, Socrata and the Sunlight Foundation.